War and Peace
I have always been uncomfortable at Remembrance Day services, whether in churches or at cenotaphs at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month. It is meet and right to be uncomfortable, for it is not a comforting time or event to remember. My discomfort in youth stemmed from what seemed to me then a glorification of war, a celebration of the glory and honour of the sacrifice of fallen heroes. It was all a little unsettling, especially as history and literature so graphically show us the horror and injustice, the propaganda and atrocities, committed by all sides in conflict. Wilfred Owen summed up the feeling for many in the elegiac poem he wrote during WWI, “Dulce et Decorum Est”: if the reader could witness the gruesome pain and horror of a gas attack, Owen concludes, then “my friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory/The Old Lie: “Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori.” It is not sweet and gentle to die for one’s country; it is an insane, horrible, hellish, painful death.
On Remembrance Day we should talk of peace, not war, but it is so difficult, for our minds, our language, conditioned by centuries, more easily sing of arms and man than the way of peace.
Or so thought Ernest Hemingway’s narrator in the finest novel to emerge from the First World War, A Farewell to Arms: reflecting on his experiences and observations while serving on the Italian front as an ambulance driver—something Hemingway himself did—the young lieutenant, who has narrowly escaped death in a mortar attack—again as Hemingway himself experienced—observes that he “was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain . . . I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it . . . words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were [now] obscene.” A bitter cynicism reflected there, shared by many veterans who expressed themselves artistically after that war. After WWI and II, we live in a skeptical age; we do not easily trust politicians and statesmen to do the right thing. We are too aware of the influence of arms manufacturers and multi-national corporations, of the dependence of our economy on military spending, of the sale of arms by the developed world to the underdeveloped world. We know that the five major arms suppliers to the world are the five permanent member states of the UN Security council.
It has often been said that “war is waged by old men; fought by young ones.” I saw a billboard once that read, “Bring back Canadian peacekeepers; send the politicians.” Visiting a Canadian war cemetery in the Netherlands, I was moved to anger at the ages of the dead on the simple white tombstones, 17, 18, 20, 22. When I became a father, my discomfort with Remembrance Day increased a thousandfold; I cannot stand the thought of any of my children—all our children—going off to war. I will do anything in my power to prevent that from ever happening. That’s what Remembrance Day means to me now, and what I think it has come to mean to many: not a celebration of war but a declaration that world war must not happen again: there must be no more sacrifice of the younger generation by an older. We owe our children and our children’s children that promise and assurance.
On Remembrance Day we should talk of peace, not war, but it is so difficult, for our minds, our language, conditioned by centuries, more easily sing of arms and man than the way of peace. War is the failure of the human imagination. Surely the central message of the Prince of Peace calls us to radically change our attitudes, to pursue the way of justice and peace. The hymn often sung at cenotaphs this day, “I vow to thee, my country,” contrasts our earthly nation with an as yet undiscovered realm of peace. It seems after 2000 years we still haven’t found our Lord’s way. The churches, indeed the religions of the world, have a central role to play in the cause of peace. At the base of so many conflicts in our world lie hatred and prejudice of peoples of differing faiths and creeds. If spiritual leaders worldwide spoke loudly and plainly against hatred, against racism, against injustice; if religious leaders of the world would not give their blessing and encouragement to human conflict, surely their impact would be felt among the people. All the world’s great religions profess the cause of peace, yet we have Muslim armed against Jew, Christian against Muslim, Protestant against Catholic. Everyone seems to hate everybody else and the way of peace is lost in the shouting rhetoric. If spiritual leaders cannot love, there is little hope for their followers. Words such as sacred, glory, hallow, could have meaning again if they were infused with their true spiritual significance, if they were applied to the cause of life, not death. “I have set before you life and death,” says the Lord; “therefore, choose life, that you and your children may live.” Asked once how to achieve world peace, Mother Teresa answered, “Children, ask your parents to teach you how to pray. That is the beginning.”
On Remembrance Day, we honour those who fought for their country in wartime, and it is meet and right that we should lament their loss. But let us not forget those who returned from war maimed, physically, emotionally and spiritually. In the last ten years, the Canadian armed forces have lost more soldiers from suicide than were killed in Afghanistan. Let us not forget the wives and children of veterans, living and dead, whose lives have been shattered as well. Let us not forget those who struggle for peace for the good of all nations and commit ourselves anew to that quest. We, as Christians, as Canadians, as members of the human family, need to challenge every call to hatred we hear, every slur against other races, against refugees or people of other faiths. All people everywhere want the same thing—food and shelter and a brighter future for their children. That common goal should unite us all. The way of the Prince of Peace is through compassion and justice. It is not an easy road, but it is our Lord’s Great Commandment.
